Tweet of the Day: Talents and Skills Thesaurus: Mimicking
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In Transit, The Phoenix Massing, SSV Kursk SR-3, War Room, November 10, 2196
Over the last three weeks we investigated a dozen sites connected to Cerberus and came up with nothing. We found no hints of their plans, resources, or current location. Just a series of uneventful drops, except for the thresher maw in Karnak. It took an orbital strike by Kursk to get us out that mess. Every lead came up empty. And to top it off the XO informed me that the ship’s stores of vegetables, ice cream and instant coffee were low. A crew could live happily for weeks on end without asparagus. Leave them without vanilla ice cream and coffee and morale tanked in minutes.
The ship’s VI chimed through the intercom, “Incoming call for Commander Thompson-Ramos on the Q.E.D.”
“On it,” I said.
Major Lianna Obutu, Alliance Intelligence, appeared on the pad, “Commander, I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time.”
“It all depends on what you got for me major,” I said.
“Of course. I just got a few items I think you would be interested in. Detective Cruz, of the Milgrom Police Department followed up a lead from C-Sec and raided a investment firm. It turns out that the executive assistant for the firm’s CEO diverted millions of credits in investment funds to multiple sources. Some of them were innocuous, but others are linked to several high profile criminal investigations through out Citadel space, multiple robberies, a few kidnappings, and at least five murders of political and business leaders. There also several joint investment schemes with Dah’ta Manufacturing-”
I interrupted her,”Wait, Dah’ta, that’s the company that owned the element zero refineries on Camala.”
“That’s right sir. We found a lot funds going into several weapons parts manufacturers, bio-tech engineering firms, and a transport company run by salarians out of Omega, a company that specializes in running eezo transports throughout the Verge and Terminus systems. We are running down the other leads within Citadel space, but,” she shook her head,”we lost all our operatives in Omega during the Cerberus occupation.”
Gods in dark spaces….
It all came back to eezo. The blood plague required substantial quantities of the stuff to manufacture, plus more to built the fleet to deliver them. Cerberus had the expertise to alter the virus so that it would affect only humans. Didn’t make much sense unless they were planning a false flag operation, one that would draw the Alliance into a dirty war with batarian terrorists. And that was one of multiple possibilities, each one worse than the next.
“So all roads lead to Omega,” I said.
“As leads go, it’s the best we have, sir,” said Obutu.
“Thank you major,” I said.
“One more thing commander. The turian high command forwarded this image from their archives,” said the major. She disappeared. In her place appeared a close up of the face of the man that Eva called Jack. Except the man iris had a cybernetic pattern to them.
“Where is this from?” I asked.
Major Obutu reappeared, “Ambassador Wei-Len passed your report to the turian Councilor and he forwaded this image, time stamped about a month after the end of the of the First Contact War. According to the turians it was a data fragment recovered from Saren’s records. Something to do with his brother Desolas death near a place called Temple Palaven. The turians said they didn’t have anything more since Saren released masking VIs into the Council and Hierarchy’s archives the moment he was declared a traitor. Oh and that the first place the Reapers hit ground side during the war was the site of the temple. When the turians nuked the Reaper there they demolished everything within a kilometer radius.”
“Well it confirms the connection between the two. That’s got to be useful,” I said.
“I hope so sir. Alliance HQ, out,” she said with a sharp salute.
I called Navigator Johnson, “XO, set a course for Omega.”
“Aye, sir!”
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Neither Here nor There.... 